


basil makes everything better

by angharad_crewe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, F/F, Falling In Love, Interspecies Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2465015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angharad_crewe/pseuds/angharad_crewe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amara's "To Do" list:<br/>1) Pass xenobiology. (Note: Waking up in time for class and inhaling coffee may help.)<br/>2) Don't throw pillows at Minnah when she wakes you up in the morning. (Note: Throwing pillows at a 200cm woman with muscles the size of your head is probably not a good idea.)<br/>3) Don't kill the basil plant. (Nanay would be devastated.)<br/>4) Avoid the paparazzi as much as possible. (Note: Don't flip them off. Or let Minnah threaten to disembowel them.)<br/>5) Get checked out at the clinic. This weird prickle whenever Rho's around, it could be some sort of alien allergy. (Note: Pay better attention in xenobiology.)<br/>6) Take Rho sightseeing. Her horns turn a really pretty shade of pink when she's excited. Almost a cherry-tree color. (Note: That prickle's back. Clinic, definitely.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	basil makes everything better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marie_L](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/gifts).



It was a sunny autumn morning late in the first semester of her first year at university. Any other Tuesday, Amara would have been trying not to fall asleep in xenobiology. Today, however, was not any other Tuesday.

“Explain to me again,” her mother said, pinching her nose between her fingers in the way that meant she’d been up since six, possibly in the Situation Room for a couple of hours, and was currently debating whether a fifth cup of coffee would be wise or would invite down the wrath of the presidential doctor. 

“It was the paps,” Amara protested. “They’re not supposed to come on campus, but you know they do. And I had to tell Minnah last week not to threaten to disembowel them again, because then they put that in the papers and I end up looking like an entitled little shit.”

Her mother rang for coffee. “Language,” she said, although her heart didn’t sound like it was in it. “Just in the Oval Office, dear. And I didn’t mean the pictures – obviously it was that lowlife Bridewell again. It’s a pity he’s such a good photographer. His talent’s wasted on gossip rags.”

Amara didn’t particularly care about Bridewell’s wasted talent, but she kept her mouth shut. The longer her mother could be kept from the subject at hand, the more chances Amara had of some crisis arriving to sweep her mother away to deal with foreign unrest, or domestic upheaval, or, for that matter, Rho’s mother. 

Oh god, she was going to have to officially meet Rho’s mother. And after that awkward initial encounter -

“What I meant was,” her mother said, smiling distractedly at the aide who brought the coffee, “explain to me again how you ended up _in flagrante delicto_ with the daughter of the Shtaggyk ambassador, in the middle of what I’m sure I don’t have to remind you is an extremely delicate trade negotiation.”

Amara let her head thunk back onto the headrest of the chair she was sitting in. “It wasn’t _in flagrante delicto_ , Mom, really. It was just a kiss.” She considered – briefly – trying to pass the whole incident off as a cultural misunderstanding (I thought Shtaggyk greeted people like that!), but Rho would have her head, and besides, her mother was no slouch at this sort of thing. She’d have spotted the lie from Amara’s body language, even if she hadn’t known full well that Shtaggyk didn’t greet people that way, and that Amara knew they didn’t. “It’s not like we were having sex on the main quad with an appreciative audience.”

“What you do in your off time is your own business,” her mother said, raising an elegant eyebrow, “although I’m sure I never had time to have sex on the main quad while _I_ was at the Academy.”

“You were doing a triple major, Mom,” Amara said. Overachievers. “And it was just a kiss.”

It wasn’t just a kiss, though, and they both knew it. With public opposition to the trade agreement with the Shtaggyk running high, and with Rho’s mother being an obdurate skinflint who probably slept on top of her moneybags like a dragon with a horde (not that Amara would ever say that out loud, because it sounded much less complimentary outside her head), the president’s only daughter being photographed kissing the Shtaggyk ambassador’s daughter was, at the very least, A News Story.

(Amara hated News Stories. She got a C in Intro Robotics, and someone in administration leaked it? A News Story, and commentators lamenting the state of education in America. She was overheard in the cafeteria saying she hated broccoli? A News Story, and commentators lamenting the state of health in America. She gave up her piano lessons when it became clear that Nanay hadn’t passed down her musical genes? A News Story, and commentators lamenting the state of culture in America. 

Now, evidently, it was time for a Morals News Story. Combined with a touch of xenophobia, just for kicks.)

Her mother was giving her that skeptical eyebrow that meant “you’d better cough up more than that, buster.” It worked a treat on Congress, and despite a lifetime of being exposed to it, Amara wasn’t immune either.

She sighed. “I like her, Mom. I don’t know… we’re very different, but I want to see if we can make it work. I’m sorry about the trade negotiations, really, I am, and I know the news stories will be bad, but I really like her.”

Her mother let her stew for a minute more while she drank the last of her coffee, but then set the cup down briskly. “Well, then,” she said, and smiled the broad smile that had won her the hearts of both Nanay and the American people, “congratulations. Don’t worry about the negotiations – we’ll make things work. That’s my job.”

A job she was probably now running an hour late on, causing the schedulers to tear their hair out. (Again.) But she always made time for Amara, always. Amara felt a rush of affection for her.

Her mother, however, ruined the moment. “You _are_ up to date on your STD shots, right?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “And you remember your xenobiology classes? Always ask before every new sexual act, because what may be pleasurable for humans is not always…”

“If you start quoting Mbangwa, I swear I will destroy all the coffee in Washington,” Amara said, with complete assurance.

“I hear they make a delicious lightly stimulating beverage on Shtaggyk,” her mother said, steepling her fingers and looking innocently up at the ceiling. “If you destroy all the coffee in Washington, perhaps I’ll have to talk to Rho’s mother about including it in the trade agreement.”

Amara sighed.

~

_three months earlier_

“It’s not that I’m prejudiced against extraterrestrials,” Amara told Minnah, crossing her arms and tucking her legs under her on the regulation twin bed in her new dorm room. “I _like_ the Twin Heads of Shimoom, even if they did step on my feet at the last state dinner. You’d think with two heads they could watch where they were going - but that’s not important. And my Beatton tutor for fifth-grade calculus was the first tutor I ever really liked! I’m not prejudiced!”

“This is the most secure suite on campus,” Minnah said, looking unmoved. It was hard for a 200cm woman with a shaved head and bulging muscles to look moved about anything, although Amara had seen her get a bit misty at a headbang concert. “It’s logical to share it with the other high-profile security risk. And you were the one who insisted on living on campus.”

Translation: If you’d wanted to have your own room, you shouldn’t have begged like a baby until your mothers gave in and let you live at the Academy instead of commuting from home.

“Nanay says it’ll be good for me,” Amara said, gloomily. “Something about sharing a small space being a) good for the soul, and b) expanding my horizons. How my horizons are supposed to expand in a small dorm room, I don’t really know.”

Minnah looked at her like she was incredibly spoiled, which, yeah, she probably was, but hey, she was _working_ on it. 

“You understand me, don’t you, Malcolm,” she told the basil plant in her windowbox, a going-away present from Nanay, who thought nobody could live without a bit of greenery to tend. Amara thought that Malcolm was probably not long for this world, but that was the good thing about plants, you couldn’t exactly tell if they’d been replaced with a ringer. (Though if anyone could, her nanay could.)

“If you start talking to plants, this is going to be a long semester,” Minnah began.

The knock on the door took them both by surprise. Amara jumped, and Minnah went all long and prowly in the way that always reminded Amara of a startled cat (a startled cat that suspected a bath was in store, no less). Though she was more of a panther than a housecat, long ruthless black lines and skilled, watchful eyes. 

“I’m sure it’s just Lady Rhochoeses,” Amara said, glad that Minnah was on her side. She’d had all the required self-defense and personal fitness classes, and she could probably hold her own in a fight against most people, but Minnah could take her down in an instant.

Minnah inclined her head, stepped so her body was between Amara and the door, dropped a casual hand to rest on her pulser, and called, “Enter.”

The Shtaggyk who stepped through the door was tall, almost as tall as Minnah. The horns on her head looked lethally sharp, polished until they gleamed a dull blue, and her clothing was simple and streamlined in the way that Amara had long since learned meant _ready for danger_. Apart from the horns, she looked roughly humanoid, at least so far as her clothes revealed.

“Lady Rhochoeses?” Amara asked, peeking around Minnah’s elbow. 

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw amusement in the Shtaggyk’s eyes.

“No, that’s me,” said a short, plump girl, emerging from behind the taller Shtaggyk. Her horns were a soft rose pink, much stubbier and less immediately lethal than her companion’s, and her clothing was decidedly more idiosyncratic. A loud polkadot miniskirt was the only item Amara had time to note. “This is Oedae, my kyrim. You are Amara?”

Minnah and Oedae looked like wary cats evaluating newcomers, but if they had entertained any thoughts of checking each other’s credentials, Rhochoeses forestalled them. She crossed the room in a few swift steps, moving like a dancer, and settled onto the duvet next to Amara. “Call me Rho. Everyone else does – except my mother, but you know mothers – and really, nobody here can pronounce it anyways. Not properly, anyway. And if you pronounce it wrong, it comes out sounding like a type of pudding I thoroughly detest, and you wouldn’t want me to be a detestable pudding, now would you?”

Amara, feeling slightly dazed, allowed her hand to be shaken enthusiastically. “No, no, I wouldn’t. Rho.”

Rho beamed at her, the freckles on her snub nose dancing. Literally dancing. Amara was going to have to pay more attention in xenobiology, or perhaps xenocultural studies, because she’d had no idea freckles could dance. It was oddly cute.

“So,” Rho said. “Explain to me how this university works.”

~

~

“Perhaps they shouldn’t schedule xenobiology at 0800 hours,” Rho said, thoughtfully. “The picture of the Brairid sexual organ was a little much before breakfast, and the description of how it’s used…”

Amara set down her coffee cup quickly. “Thank you, Rho, let’s not recap it. My stomach’s just stopped churning.”

“I don’t think it can be comfortable,” Rho said, shaking her head decidedly. Her freckles had clustered in a clump on the tip of her nose today. Amara wasn’t yet sure whether their various movements meant something – mood, perhaps? Time of day? Stress level? – or if they were completely random. Perhaps they’d get to them in xenobiology one of these days. “Your people are less discriminatory in their sexual partners - have you ever met one with first-hand knowledge of a Brairid?”

Amara raised an eyebrow. “Did you just call the human race galactic horndogs?”

“Oh, I forgot, you’re grumpy in the mornings,” Rho said, and patted her on the arm. “If you’d got up with the alarm, Minnah wouldn’t have dumped the ice on your head. But I’ll go get you a doughnut. That’ll make you feel better.”

When she had bounced off toward the pastry cases, with Oedae following, Amara stared balefully across the table at Minnah. “I’m an Academy student, Minnah. If I want to sleep through an alarm and miss a class or two, well, it’s practically a rite of passage!”

Minnah didn’t look impressed. “You’ll thank me at the first midterm.”

“It’s not like I’m going out and partying on school nights,” Amara protested. (Weekends were a different matter, but that too was a rite of passage. And the Russian cadets always had the best vodka – although if you knew an exchange student from the Pareire System, they had a local variety that made you see actual mushrooms. In the air. It was a trip.) “I’m still getting used to Rho snoring.”

“She doesn’t snore,” Minnah said, although that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t on the night shift. “Her respiratory system functions differently than ours, and is processing the air with some difficulty. While she’s awake, she can consciously quiet the sound – Shtaggyk retain more control of their automatic processes than humans – but when she’s asleep, she can’t.”

Amara drank more coffee.

“Which you would know,” Minnah added, “if you paid attention in xenobiology.”

“You’re as bad as my mothers,” Amara said, which gallingly made Minnah look proud. 

Rho’s arrival with doughnuts interrupted their conversation. “Custard,” she said, holding out Amara’s favorite. “And chocolate for you, Minnah, and jam for me!”

“Do they have jam doughnuts on Shtaggyk?” Amara asked.

Rho, her mouth full, shook her head. “Sadly, no.” There was a merry slash of jam on her upper lip, but she didn’t seem to mind. “But I was thinking, I will have to take some back and introduce them! I even have an improvement.” She waited for effect. “ _Alcoholic_ jam doughnuts!”

“Alcoholic jam doughnuts,” Amara repeated. 

Rho nodded. “Think about it. First the fried outer shell, which is crunchy and fatty. Then the soft inner doughnut, which is sweet and light. Then the inside burst of jam flavor – strawberry is the best, but you could have cherry, blackberry, lemon, whatever you like. Now add alcohol, and it’s the ultimate! Not an everyday treat, unless you metabolize highly, but oh, so good.”

“The chefs on your world are going to curse the human name,” Amara said, laughing.

“Oh, I’ve been inventing recipes since I was knee-high to a lingit,” Rho said, comfortably. “It’s what I really love, taking old recipes and putting a new spin on them. That’s why I was so glad when Mother said she’d chosen me to come along to Earth. The more xenocuisines I learn, the better and more exotic my cuisine can be!”

Amara had never really thought of a doughnut as exotic before. She regarded the remains of hers with new interest. “But why are you Diplomatic core, then, if you should be Cultural Studies?”

Rho finished her doughnut and licked the jam off her upper lip. Her tongue was long, and polkadotted. Amara tried not to stare. “You know how mothers can be. Mine wants me to follow the family line, although I’ve told her, I’m _far_ too blunt to be a good diplomat. My sister, she’s good at it, but she’s still too young to go off-planet, so it was me.” She sighed. 

“Well,” Amara said, feeling properly awake at last, now that coffee & doughnuts had settled her stomach and the memories of the Brairid lecture had begun to fade, “if you ever open your grand xenofusion restaurant, I’ll be your most loyal customer.”

Rho grinned. “You might change your mind when Xixyxian squid is on the menu.”

~

Amara was cold, grumpy, half asleep, and standing in a hot shower. Only the last was a good thing.

“I brought you a big fluffy towel,” Rho said, sticking her head around the shower curtain. “I stopped the housekeeper and got one warm from the laundry. You know, if you hadn’t hurled the pillows at Minnah, I don’t think she would have dumped the whole ice bucket on you.”

Amara blinked at her. “Rho,” she said, “I’m taking a shower.”

“Yes, I know,” Rho said, widening her eyes slightly. “I’ve left the fluffy towel on the counter where it won’t get wet. Do you want me to start some coffee for when you get out?”

“On Earth we don’t get into other people’s showers unless we’re asked,” Amara said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Rho said, “the hole in your stomach isn’t disfiguring. I learned about it in elementary xenobiology. Does it hurt when water goes in it?”

“My bellybutton?” Amara said, after a moment, when she had to suppress an instinctive look down to make sure that she didn’t have an _actual_ hole in her stomach somehow. She’d had the teeth-falling-out dream, but never a stomach-hole dream. 

Rho giggled. “Such a funny name.”

“Uh, no,” Amara said. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Oh good,” Rho said, and beamed. “I’ll go make coffee. Hurry up, slowpoke, you know Professor Kriszta locks the doors at 0800 sharp.”

~

If there was one thing about the Academy that surprised Amara, it was how quickly things fell into a routine. Oh, there were always surprises – impromptu water-balloon fights in the quad, various holiday celebrations from a wide range of cultures and planets, sports games, weird art installations that looked like either an elephant or three people giving blowjobs (and turned out to be a meditation on the infinity of space). Amara never knew quite what she would find when she stepped out on the grass in the morning, with Rho at her elbow and Minnah and Oedae their ever-watchful companions.

On the whole, however, her life was one of routine. Xenobiology every morning at 0800 hours, with Minnah employing various ways of rousing her in time. (The ice-bucket method was a favorite, but so was a bugle, and a recording of her mother giving her campaign stump speech, and Maldreyvian ear-singing. And if all else failed, the old “turn the mattress on its side and dump the sleeper on the floor” trick.) Coffee & doughnuts afterwards. Various classes throughout the day, some with Rho and some not. Choir on Wednesdays, with Amara singing soprano and Rho singing bass (her speaking voice was high, but her singing voice was remarkably low). Physical training with Minnah every night before bed. Parties on Friday nights – Saturday morning sleeping it off – most of Saturday & Sunday studying – Sunday night dinner with her mothers.

She did make friends in her classes, and in her core. And of course there was Rho.

~

“Is your body supposed to bend that way?” Rho asked, interested, leaning backwards off her bed so she could meet Amara’s eyes.

Amara disentangled herself from her human pretzel. “Not exactly.”

Minnah waited for her to bring herself back to set position.

“It’s kind of like a dance,” Rho said, kicking her feet up to rest them on the wall. “Except a dance where you’re both trying to throw the other one on the floor.” She giggled.

“If it’s so funny, you try,” Amara said, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out. “See how you like getting stomped on by Minnah.”

“No, I’ll leave that to you,” Rho said, still grinning. “But if you want to learn to dance the _Shtaggyk_ way, I’d be happy to teach you.”

“What’s the Shtaggyk way?” Amara asked, trying to catch her breath without being obvious about it. Not that anything got past Minnah, but, well, there was such a thing as saving face. Maybe she should eat more spinach. Or get up at 0600 in order to run before xenobiology… hah. Like that was ever going to happen.

Instead of getting up like most people would have – lowering their feet from the wall, rolling into a sitting position on the bed, then standing up on the floor – Rho flipped her legs whippet-fast over her head, doing a sort of airborne somersault and landing on her feet. “I’ll show you,” she said, and reached her hands out to Amara.

“That was… really cool,” Amara said, taking them.

Rho looked confused for a second, before her eyes cleared. “Oh, well, we’re a little bit like your cats. We have a natural sense of our position in the air, so we always land on our feet.” She folded their fingers together. “Now, put your right foot in.”

Amara half expected Minnah to protest – they were only halfway through their nightly sparring session – but she didn’t say anything. Perhaps Amara still had a bit of credit left from that morning, when she successfully woke up by herself at 0700 hours for the first time ever. 

She stepped forward on her right foot, as Rho did the same. The move brought them rather close together, and Amara found herself looking down into Rho’s eyes, close enough to see the flecks of gold in the blue. 

“Now put your right foot back out,” Rho said – and was that a freckle on her lip? Had it migrated from her nose, or had Amara just not noticed it before? The freckles on her nose were in a half-moon shape today, which was quite pretty.

She stepped backwards, as directed, and the freckle vanished.

“Now put your right foot in again,” Rho said, demonstrating, and again they were pressed up against each other. Amara could feel the rise of Rho’s chest; if she’d leaned forward just the slightest bit, she could’ve pressed a kiss to one of Rho’s horns.

(Where had that thought come from?!)

“Now,” Rho said, “you shake it all about.”

Amara blinked, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Rho’s freckles were dancing again. She was beginning to suspect that freckle-dancing was silent laughter. Replaying the last two minutes in her head, she said, “Are you teaching me _the hokey-pokey_?”

Rho’s laughter was answer enough. “We learned it in Human Culture today,” she said. “We made our cute teaching assistant show it to us _five times_ because we kept saying we didn’t understand. But really it was just because it looked so funny.”

“The hokey-pokey,” Amara repeated. “Why are they teaching you the hokey-pokey? The waltz, maybe, or the Charleston, or the haka, but the hokey-pokey?”

“Here,” Rho said, and slid her hand free of Amara’s, before placing it on Amara’s shoulder. “I’ll teach you an actual Shtaggyk dance. Will that make you happy?”

“Don’t you dare teach me the Shtaggyk equivalent of the hokey-pokey,” Amara warned her. “I’ll look it up on my padd later.”

“You couldn’t do the Shtaggyk equivalent,” Rho said, airily. “It involves more coordination that humans are capable of.”

Amara was darkly suspicious that she’d heard Minnah snort.

~

Amara looked at the strange contraption sitting on their carpet, and then at Rho, who had safety goggles on and a welder in her hand. “What’s that?”

Rho smiled up at her. Her horns had little silver hoops in them today, but she’d tied her hair back with a scarf, and the safety goggles made her look ruthlessly competent in a way Amara wasn’t used to seeing from her. “I’m working on something.”

“I can see that,” Amara said, dropping her backpack on her bed and sighing in relief. Some of her textbooks weighed more than Professor Kriszta’s ego. “What are you working on? Because if it involves welding in my bedroom, I think I get to know.”

She picked up her watering can and headed to give Malcolm a little tender loving care. He’d stayed alive so far, which was nice (if slightly unexpected). She suspected Rho snitched some of his leaves sometimes, which she supposed was a proper fate for a basil plant, although she almost wished they could let Malcolm grow free and become a monster granddaddy basil plant. 

“I’m building a sex toy,” Rho said, cheerfully.

Amara nearly drowned poor Malcolm, then set the watering can down quickly before she dropped it. “What?!” Then, “Wait, are you teasing me again?”

“It’s just so funny the way you jump,” Rho said, contritely. “I’m sorry. It’s a still.”

“A still,” Amara repeated. “Like, an alcohol still.”

“I meant it to be an automatic coffee machine,” Rho said, the picture of innocence. “To wake you up in the morning. But then I looked, and it said I could buy one of those from a shop, and then, well, it seemed a pity not to experiment with Earth alcoholic beverages while I was here.”

“Minnah’s going to notice a still,” Amara said, dubiously. “And they’re not usually that complicated – what’s all that?”

Rho sat back on her heels, surveying her handiwork. “Well, it’s a Shtaggyk still. It has the heating elements built in, so we don’t need to keep it in the kitchen, and a smell-containment-field. Maybe we could keep it in the closet when we’re not using it?”

“I still think Minnah will find it, or Oedae,” Amara said. “But we could try, if you want.”

Rho dusted her hands off and stood up. In her safety goggles and hairscarf, she looked very competent, instead of her usual bubbly self. A strange prickle went down Amara’s spine, and she shivered. Maybe she was coming down with something. 

“Lemon blackberry whiskey, I was thinking,” Rho said, tapping her lips with a long finger.

“That sounds _horrible_ ,” Amara said, and Rho tackled her down onto her bed, tickling her until Amara swore that lemon blackberry whiskey sounded like the best idea in the universe.

~

“So tell me again,” her mother said, passing her the mashed potatoes, “how you got your dormitory evacuated for a bomb threat?”

Amara sighed. “A whiskey still.”

“A whiskey still,” her mother repeated, although she’d been told this story at least five times by now, once by the Academy administration, once by Minnah in her official report, a couple times on the news, and once by Amara.

“We didn’t know Drofzanian beer would get past the Shtaggyk smell-containment field!” Amara protested. “It’s not like the old whiskey stills. Rho’s been distilling her own whiskey-like alcohol for years, and it’s always been safe and smell-free.”

“You still need to keep a watch on it the whole time,” her nanay observed. “Alcohol is extremely flammable.”

“We were, though,” Amara said. “We were doing homework, and then Rho was teaching me how to draw like the Impressionists from her planet. We were laughing at how bad I am at art, when suddenly Minnah about breaks the door down, sees the still on the floor, thinks it’s a bomb of some kind, and goes into Defcon 4.”

“She smelled gas,” her mother said, “and she reacted accordingly. If it had been a real bomb, you would have been very lucky she was there. You didn’t smell the gas.”

“I had a cold,” Amara said, gloomily, “and Rho’s olfactory system only works when she tells it to. Usually she keeps it turned off because she’s still accustoming herself to Earth smells. And it wasn’t like the gas smell was all that strong – the containment field kept it 90% in – it’s just that Minnah is _very good at her job_.”

“Well, I’m glad she is,” her nanay said, pointing her fork at her. “That Bridewell fellow has been seen hanging around again, and the Shtaggyk negotiations are at an important point, and I don’t want either paparazzi or protestors getting to you right now.”

“The lemon-blackberry whiskey was vile,” Amara admitted. “But it was fun.”

Her mother smiled. “I imagine it was.”

~

“I like your leaves,” Rho announced, crunching them underfoot. “They’re very colorful.”

“It’s too early in the morning to be stomping leaves,” Amara said, shifting her backpack to a more comfortable position on her shoulder. Her eyes felt like heavy weights; she could have used an extra hour in bed this morning. It didn’t help that Rho was always so frickin’ upbeat in the morning.

“It’s nearly 0800,” Rho said, spinning around in a circle on the pavement. Her bright-striped skirt flared out around her, and her horns waved in the breeze. “The sun’s risen, and you’ve been awake for almost an _hour_ now, don’t be grumpy.”

“I’m not grumpy,” Amara protested, although she knew she totally was.

“Here,” Rho said, bending down to pick up a particularly vibrant leaf. “To cheer you up,” she said, and tucked it into Amara’s hair, pressing a laughing kiss to her nose. 

When she pulled away and went skipping through the leaves again, Amara felt a bit funny. Maybe it was the early hour. Or the thought of xenobiology lecture. It truly was the bane of her existence.

“Come on, slowpoke, we’ll be late!” Rho called back, and Amara laughed and followed.

~

“There is no way I can remember all this,” Amara said, despairingly. “No way.”

She had flashcards spread out all over her bed – her nanay had always taught her that sometimes the old ways were the best ways – and she was on her third cup of coffee. She’d been through her xenobiology textbook three times, and carefully crossreferenced all her lecture notes, and she was just now fully realizing how much material was going to be on the final. It was truly daunting.

Rho wasn’t much help. She knew half of it already, because Shtaggyk elementary education was much more thorough in xenobiology than Terran was, and what she hadn’t already known she’d picked up like a sponge. Still, she was keeping Amara company and drilling her on the flashcards, which was nice.

“Yes, you can,” she said, encouragingly. “Or, well, maybe you can’t remember _all_ of it, but you can remember enough to pass. Between Minnah and me, we got you to all the lectures, except that one time you were projectile vomiting.”

Talk about practical xenobiology – Rho had experienced it that morning. “It’s just so much.”

“Now you’re whining,” Rho said, practically. “Come on. I’ll run you through the Rosestar system again. You know, the ones with five different kinds of penises, and four hearts. And then we can do the slimeball species from Pavivon 4.”

“I hate finals week,” Amara said, slowly thumping her head into her pillow. “Even the five-dicked species can’t cheer me up.”

Rho sighed. “Let’s just get through this exam, and if you pass, I’ll bake you the most special food in my culture. It’s better than jam doughnuts.”

That made Amara crack an eye open. Rho’s love of jam doughnuts was pretty much legendary. The pastry-counter workers even kept one back for her every morning. “Really?”

“Really truly,” Rho said, then hopped up from her bed and crossed the room, stepping on scattered notecards. “Budge over. We’re going to get you to pass xenobiology if it’s the last thing we do.”

~

“So, how do you feel now?” Rho asked, as they came back into their room. “Relieved?”

Amara didn’t answer her for a moment, intent on making a beeline across the room and faceplanting straight into her pillows. “I feel like sleeping for a week.”

“Well, remember we’ve got First Contact papers due on Saturday,” Rho reminded her. “And I have my Early Terran Civilizations module. You promised to help me bone up on the Ancient Greeks.”

“First I’m going to sleep for a few hours,” Amara said. “And then I’ll help you bone the Ancient Greeks as much as you like.”

Rho laughed. As Amara drifted off to sleep, she could hear Rho puttering about the room, tidying things up, humming a strange tune under her breath. It was strangely relaxing. 

She dreamt that somebody pulled the covers up over her.

~

Since the startled whoop she’d let out could probably have been heard all the way in Beijing, Amara wasn’t surprised that Minnah was standing in their doorway in under five seconds. 

She grinned at her. “I got 82 percent on my xenobiology final!”

“Congratulations,” Minnah said. “Will we be going partying tonight in celebration?”

Amara was opening her mouth to say yes when she remembered Rho, who was off at her Early Terran Civilizations module. (Greeks having been appropriately boned up on the night before.) “No, Rho’s making me some kind of Shtaggyk food tonight, I think. And I have more exams to study for anyways. But after finals, yeah, we’re totally going partying.”

“Bridewell’s on campus,” Minnah told her. “But I told him I’d disembowel him if he took any more pictures of you with a hookah, so we might be safe from his worst exploits for a while.”

Amara blinked at her. “Maybe don’t threaten to disembowel paparazzi. Even though you don’t mean it, if they print that my Secret Service detail is saying things like that, it’ll look bad.”

“Who said I didn’t mean it?” Minnah said, and suddenly grinned. She had far too many teeth. Like a shark.

“I’m glad you’re on my side,” Amara told her.

~

“Can I open my eyes yet?” Amara asked.

She felt Rho set a plate down in front of her. “Yes.”

Rho had fed her a full dinner – some kind of vegetable stew, with fried bread, and an enormous salad. There had been a cocktail that Rho swore she’d invented herself, fusing the most beloved drinks of two star systems, and some truly stinky French cheese. But the piece de resistance, Rho had said, was dessert. And here it was.

It was cake. A beautiful rose-colored cake, almost the exact shade of Rho’s skin. 

“It’s called lauryana,” Rho said, as Amara raised the first bite to her lips. 

Amara had known Rho loved to cook and bake, but this was incredible. “It’s delicious.”

“Every cook makes her own,” Rho said, with the softest smile Amara had ever seen on her lips. “They say you learn a lot about yourself, coming up with your own lauryana recipe.”

“What’s so complicated about it?” Amara asked, then took another bite, letting the flavors roll over her tongue. There was chocolate in there, and something creamy, and a slight touch of lemon. And something, she couldn’t quite identify it, it was hovering right there…

“It doesn’t have a set recipe,” Rho explained. “It’s a cake, but it’s also a story.”

“What kind of story?” Amara asked.

She only realized Rho was blushing when she looked closely. Her freckles were dancing quite quickly now; Amara almost felt that if she could hear Rho’s heartbeat, it would be in rhythm with her freckles. 

“They say,” Rho said, instead of answering her question, “that you know when you want to learn how to bake lauryana because you want to feed someone, to take care of them. That it harkens back to millions of years ago, when we built nests and sharpened our horns to protect our families. That finding your lauryana is something every woman has to do for herself.”

“I don’t understand,” Amara said, plainly, because she felt like something important was happening. The dizzy feeling she’d been noticing more and more this semester was back. 

“I made you lauryana because I wanted to feed you,” Rho said, slightly desperately, as if that would make it all clear – and then reached across the table and, very gently, laid her hand on Amara’s.

Oh. _Oh._

Amara’s mind was a whirl, but she knew one thing she wanted to do immediately, and that was to set Rho’s mind at ease. She opened her mouth, not knowing quite what she was going to say, and it came out, “On Earth, we usually ask a girl we like out for coffee.”

Rho flushed darker for a second – but then she laughed. “I’ve bought you coffee and doughnuts all semester. This would be at least our thirtieth date by those standards.”

“Your lauryana is better than any doughnuts,” Amara said, and turned her hand over, twining their fingers together.

“You know how to sweet-talk a girl,” Rho said. Her eyes were shining.

They looked at each other for a long minute, just drinking in how fully and how quickly things had changed. One day, roommates and friends – and then the next, taking a first step into something more. And yet Amara thought that perhaps it hadn’t been quite so sudden after all; she remembered the way Rho’s freckles danced for her, and the shortness of their breath as they had been pressed close in the hokey-pokey, and the way Rho cuddled up to her on her bed, teaching her about the strange xenobiology of the Monks of Pishoom. 

She remembered the way she’d watched Rho dance in the leaves, the feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t quite identify, the way Rho looked when she was building her still.

“So what’s the secret ingredient in your lauryana?” she asked, clearing her throat.

“You can’t ever tell anyone,” Rho said. “It’s a secret between you and me.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Amara said.

Rho looked confused for a moment, but she had quickly learned when to shrug off idioms. “Well. It’s basil.”

“You used _Malcolm_?” Amara said, in mock outrage, twisting to look over her shoulder at her basil plant. He looked all right. Surprisingly, he hadn’t died yet. Her nanay would be proud.

“He sacrificed a few leaves to bring us together,” Rho said, her voice an endearing mix of confident and shy.

“Well then,” Amara said. She stood, and Rho stood up with her. 

They moved, almost like magnets, until the table was no longer between them, and Amara was looking down into the shining face of the girl she was falling in love with. “We can’t let his sacrifice be in vain.” 

“No,” Rho said, huskily, “we can’t,” and put a hand behind Amara’s neck to draw her down.

~

Some time later, Rho burst out laughing.

“Not that I mind laughter during sex,” Amara said, propping her chin on Rho’s hipbone, “but what am I doing that’s so funny?”

Rho reached a hand down and stroked Amara’s hair. “Nothing. It’s just…”

“What?” Amara asked, sticking her lip out comically. “Do I make funny sex faces? Do humans do it differently than Shtaggyk?”

“It’s just,” Rho said, rubbing her foot along Amara’s back, “that you had your xenobiology final, and now you’re having a practical xenobiology exam.”

“I have a whole new interest in xenobiology now,” Amara agreed, very seriously, before breaking into a grin of her own. She pressed a kiss, feather-light, to Rho’s stomach. “Who knew you had dancing freckles all over your body?”

“You know how we can control our breathing?” Rho said. “Well, watch this.” She got a concentrating look on her face, and then the freckles on her stomach made an elegant shape. “That’s the Shtaggyk word for love.”

“You’re really too sweet,” Amara said. “And wait, you can control your freckles?”

“It’s kind of hard,” Rho said. “Usually I don’t.”

Amara traced the shape with her fingertips, feeling Rho shudder underneath her. “But they’re always dancing.”

“They are?” Rho asked, and looked even more shy. “They dance when we’re happy.”

Amara swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat, and kissed Rho’s hipbone again. “Well, then,” she said, hearing the roughness in her voice. “Let’s see how much I can make them dance by doing this.”

Rho gasped, arching up underneath her, as Amara pressed kisses everywhere she could reach. “Teach me what to do,” Amara said. “I want to know everything.”

“Yes,” Rho said, and threw her head back in a long moan.

~

Minnah had never knocked on the door in the morning before. This time, she did.

Amara opened the door. She was already wearing a robe and fluffy slippers, and carrying a towel. “I’m awake. No need for the ice bucket.”

“Why are we whispering?” Minnah asked, looking as if she expected there to be a dastardly reason. Another still, perhaps. 

“I see you haven’t been briefed by the night shift yet?” Amara asked, innocently.

Minnah narrowed her eyes.

“Rho’s still sleeping,” Amara said. This never happened. Rho was always up at dawn. “She’s tired.”

Minnah looked even more suspicious. 

“See you later!” Amara whispered, merrily, and shut the door.

She took a long, hot shower, and then, toweling her hair, leaned over the bed. “Morning, sunshine,” she said, kissing the nearest horn.

Rho turned over, her eyes opening sleepily, and woke up smiling.

~

“Oh god,” Amara said, stopping suddenly in the middle of the quad.

Rho turned to her, eyebrows already raising quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

“The _trade negotiations_!” Amara hissed. “Your mother already thinks we’re trying to ram a trade deal through that will cheat your planet. If she finds out I seduced her daughter, she’s going to be furious!”

Rho considered that for a moment. “Please,” she said. “I think _I_ seduced _you_.”

“You think?” Amara asked. “You did make the cake, I guess. But I was definitely ogling you before that.”

Minnah and Oedae, behind them, were pretending very carefully not to be hearing all this.

“Will your mothers be furious at me for seducing their daughter?” Rho asked, playfully.

“Well, Mother’s going to be worried about me having time to focus on my studies,” Amara admitted. “But I’ll just tell her about how you pushed and pulled me into a pass in xenobiology. And Nanay will like the part about the basil being the magic that brought us together.”

“Basil, lemon, and chocolate,” Rho said, preening. “A perfect match.”

“Shhh,” Amara said. “Don’t give away your secret recipe in public!”

“Thanks, dear,” Rho said, and leaned up to kiss her, quick and easy.

Amara was far too lost in the still new and thrilling sensation of Rho’s mouth on hers to notice the cameraman lurking nearby. She did, however, hear Minnah’s muttered oath.

“Oh, fuck,” Amara said, once she saw Bridewell’s rapidly-fleeing figure, and understood what had happened.

“I think ‘oh fuck’ was what happened last night,” Rho said, under her breath. “And this morning.”

“You’re a menace,” Amara said, laughing, and couldn’t quite bring herself to care that she was about to be a News Story. Again. Because if the price for having Rho’s hands in hers was being a News Story, well then, it was a price she was willing to pay.

“Do you want me to disembowel him?” Minnah asked, looking as if she only awaited the order. Oedae stood by, ready to help.

Amara considered it for a moment, but then just smiled. “No,” she said, and reached down to hold Rho’s hand. She had to teach her girlfriend Terran customs, after all. “Let him publish.”

“Doughnuts?” Rho asked, brightly.

“Yes,” Amara said. “Doughnuts it is.”

~


End file.
